My Addiction
by Balanced
Summary: And you let him lie.


**Author's Note: **Submited for the 'Everybody Lie!' challenge over at the house_wilson livejournal community.

The moment it begins there's a quiet, sort of broken way about it that attracts you both. The way it always starts with tears (his), desperation (yours), and self-loathing (shared by the both of you). The way he softly babbles _we can't i just want to talk i need my best friend_each time he shows up at your apartment after a fight with whichever wife it is. The way you step back to let him in, seeing the lie from the moment he opens his mouth.

You never know for sure what's going to trigger it. Spats about you are a common, the _most_common, reason because it's after these that he shows up needing to know that you're worth it, that you want to be fought for. Because, yeah, his marriages are all on the skids from the word go, but when your lips are traveling down his throat you think that he's sort of okay with the trade off.

Then you get with Stacy and you're sure everything's going to change. You tell him that you can't do that to her, you've never been one for cheating, and while that may work for him, you can be faithful. You tell yourself, with total confidence, that you don't need him.

Then Stacy's out of town and Bonnie's being a bitch, and he's standing in your doorway looking beaten and beautiful and he's asking without words, with the deep incline of his head and his red, puffy eyes.

When you press your lips to his you can taste his salty tears.

The infarction happens and it's full-stop. There are days that you think the pain is going to kill you, days when you wish it would. He's over more often than ever before, but with strictly friendship overtones. You think he notices how many times a day Stacy goes out for "fresh air" but he doesn't comment. Months go by, Stacy leaves, and then you're showing up at his place again, utterly devastated; you feel ashamed of the new scar until he gently runs a finger the length of it.

_I like it._

Yeah right.

No, really. It's . . . . like a battle scar. You fought your Maker and you won. Not too many people can say that.

Maker-Shmaker. Please focus.

Somehow it's a relationship of his that keep the two of you honest. She has long blond hair, bright blue eyes, and you hate her with ever fiber of your being. You fantasize about her falling down a flight of stairs, getting knocked out of a fifth-story window, contracting an assortment of deadly diseases, getting hit by a car, and it's fun and amusing until she is.

You think he'll never forgive you. He's destroyed, and for the first time, he isn't coming to you for healing. He's trying a support group instead of sex with his best friend and it makes you sick, but you don't want it to work. All those nights you convinced yourself that he needed you, that he would never work without you, and you never really saw that you needed him.

A road trip saves the day, and after dinner that night he screams and cries when he comes.

Sam is nothing when you compare her with what the two of you have. He says what he always says: _it's going to be different this time i know it we have to stop this this time _but the first night that the two of you have to stay late at the hospital together you slide your hand up his back in a very non-friendship way, and he demonstrates to you that in the end you're the one that holds the control.

Then you're dating Cuddy, but even she isn't enough to stop this in its tracks. By now it's become such a part of your lives that you don't even waste your breath whispering new promises of fidelity and while he stops coming to you, you can't stop going to him. And he never turns you away.

_You're the one that's the addict._

. . . I know.

Now he's standing in front of you, brown eyes so soft, sad, broken. "You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were . . ."

God, it seems like weeks ago instead of hours that you stood on that balcony railing and looked down at the pool beneath you. "Because of Cuddy? Give me a break."

He doesn't answer, and the cloud of silence stretches on. It's flawed timing, but that's practically a requirement, for you to step a little closer, invading his personal space but you do. You can practically see the walls begin to crumble, and replacing them is that familiar thing, desire. You reach for the bottom of his tee shirt and feel the soft skin underneath.

"It's the last time," he says before brushing his tongue against your lips, before gently pushing you against the door.

And you let him lie.


End file.
